Postcolonialism vs. Central and Eastern Europe

Korek, Janusz

The author of the article claims that in research on history and contemporary problems of Central and Eastern Europe a postcolonial perspective is requisite. Traditional postcolonial studies, usually controlled by representatives of a leftist orientation, have until recently neglected or rejected such a possibility. One ought not conceal the fact that a multitude of contemporary problems that pervade the countries of this region are political, economic, social or mental remnants of the colonial period, be it Soviet or German, especially from the Second World War. This directs the author’s attention to the mechanisms of annexation, the types of hegemony and methods of obtaining domination, formation of colonial and anticolonial discourses, the strategies of ruling and knowledge production in Central and Eastern Europe subjugated by Soviet and German imperialisms. Western research assured the colonised dependency of Central and Eastern Europe suggesting political and civilisational inferiority of the region in relation to the West. The German, or Western in general, colonial discourses targeted at this region of Europe is not only an issue of the past. The author claims that it is possible to develop a language that allows to express, describe and compare cultural phenomena and colonial experience with the phenomena of the Soviet era and post –Soviet experience retaining all their differences. The opposition between the East and the West as an extremely ideologised abstract category is useless.